Perhaps this has been asked and answered a hundred times, but I have yet to see an answer that really satisfies me.
As we all know, pure ammonia can be extraordinarily hard to find, and many a beginning aquarist has accidentally purchased ammonia with surfactants for their fishless cycling. You can read all over the internet that ammonia containing surfactants is bad and should not be used, but no one ever seems to say just why.
In your average "clear" ammonia, you've probably got 0.1% to 0.5% surfactant. Consider that you're adding mere drops of this stuff to your tank, and you've created an essentially homeopathic dilution of the surfactant. We're talking parts per billion here.
I'm a scientist by education, and it just doesn't make any sense to me that anything at that minute a concentration would have any real potential to harm your tank... especially if you were to do a near complete water change before adding fish. Sure, large amounts of surfactant would definitely be a bad thing, but at such vanishingly miniscule amounts, I just can't fathom its being that great a risk.
So, please tell me - how is it that these essentially immeasurable amounts of surfactant are so bad for a tank? (If you can link some references, that would be great!)
Thanks!
As we all know, pure ammonia can be extraordinarily hard to find, and many a beginning aquarist has accidentally purchased ammonia with surfactants for their fishless cycling. You can read all over the internet that ammonia containing surfactants is bad and should not be used, but no one ever seems to say just why.
In your average "clear" ammonia, you've probably got 0.1% to 0.5% surfactant. Consider that you're adding mere drops of this stuff to your tank, and you've created an essentially homeopathic dilution of the surfactant. We're talking parts per billion here.
I'm a scientist by education, and it just doesn't make any sense to me that anything at that minute a concentration would have any real potential to harm your tank... especially if you were to do a near complete water change before adding fish. Sure, large amounts of surfactant would definitely be a bad thing, but at such vanishingly miniscule amounts, I just can't fathom its being that great a risk.
So, please tell me - how is it that these essentially immeasurable amounts of surfactant are so bad for a tank? (If you can link some references, that would be great!)
Thanks!
